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May 1 is probably a big day for your high school senior. Most likely it’s the deadline by which the colleges and universities in which he’s interested require him to accept their one of their admission offers. And many if not most of these institutions also require other things of him by this date. Among these:

Payment of a non-refundable enrollment deposit: If this deposit isn’t paid by May 1, he’ll lose his place in this coming fall’s entering freshman class. He may be able to get a place on his selected school’s waiting list, but there’ll be no assurance that he’ll be permitted to enroll in its fall classes.

Payment of a housing deposit: This deposit is probably non-refundable, too. Paying it by May 1 or whatever other deadline the institution has established is necessary to ensure that he’ll have a place to live in on-campus housing when he arrives at school.

Acceptance of financial aid offered by the institution: This offer will most likely be cancelled if it isn’t accepted by May 1 or, again, any later deadline your student’s Been given. And while any Federal Pell Grant or Federal Direct Student Loan that gets cancelled can be reinstated later, other aid he was offered probably cannot.

If your high school senior’s already selected the college he wants to attend, and if all the steps described above have been completed, congratulations!

But if you aren’t sure whether or how your student’s selected college is applying a May 1 deadline to him, contact the school right away to find out. And if May 1 is his deadline for anything, be sure all that needs to be done is done. Failing to do so by midnight on May 1 can really foul up college plans!

Contact College Affordability Solutions at (512) 366-5354 or collegeafford@gmail.comfor a free consultation if you need assistance on any aspect of financing postsecondary study.

The end of another academic term is approaching, and students struggling with courses are no doubt assessing their options. Should they drop these courses? Probably not.

Dropping now is a bad idea for several reasons:

Students who drop courses late in a term usually receive little or no refund of tuition and fees paid for the courses. So they get no return on the money they invested, and repeated drops can force them to enroll for one or more additional terms, costing them thousands in extra tuition, fees, and other costs of attendance.

If dropped courses are necessary to satisfy academic requirements — either in the “core” curriculum or to fulfill the demands of a student’s major — the student will eventually have to retake them or similar courses. Result? The student pays twice to complete requirements once.

Dropping courses can also jeopardize financial aid eligibility. To get federal aid, Washington requires a student to meet institutional standards for Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) toward graduation. These standards — usually posted on financial aid office websites — obligate the student to successfully complete a certain percentage of the courses in which she enrolls. Many scholarship providers, schools, and states apply similar requirements for their aid programs. But if dropping would put a student below these percentages, she could lose future financial aid.

Because of all this, students should avoid the temptation to drop in order to avert grades that are good but, for whatever reasons, aren’t considered good enough. Some students, for example, can’t tolerate anything less than an A for reasons of personal pride. Others may worry that Bs or Cs will ruin their graduate or professional school applications.

Is there ever a time when a student should consider dropping a course? Yes. SAP also requires at least a 2.0 undergraduate Grade Point Average (GPA), and most institutions have minimum GPAs that students must remain at or above in order to remain enrolled. If a student is certain her final grade in a course will put her below these minimums, dropping may be her best option.

Students may appeal lost aid if they fail to maintain SAP. These appeal processes are usually described on aid office websites. Successful appeals generally (a) document extraordinary circumstances (e.g. illness or family emergency) that undermined academic performance and (b) describe steps the student has taken to overcome these circumstances.

Instead of dropping, it’s usually better to seek academic assistance — and to do so ASAP. Visit with the instructor, get a tutor, join a study group, consult an academic advisor or campus counselor, etc. These actions can go a long way toward avoiding all the costly negatives stemming from a dropped course!

Got questions about how to avoid making college attendance more expensive than it needs to be? Contact College Affordability Solutions for a free consultation at (512) 366-5354 or https://collegeafford.com.

As a responsible parent you of course advise your student not to gamble. But also urge him to stay away from cryptocurrency investments!

Unfortunately, these investments are easy to make. After loan and other aid money pays tuition and fees for an academic term, your student gets the remainder to cover that term’s books and other necessary expenses. Now he could have up to a few thousand dollars in hand.

He can invest these funds — hopefully in a safe and secure bank account, but also in high-risk opportunities such as cryptocurrencies. Wherever he invests, he’ll still need to pay for necessities like books, housing, and food as the term progresses.

What makes cryptocurrencies so dicey for college students? It’s what investment professionals call “volatility.” Cryptocurrencies can become really volatile really fast!

Far better for your student to spend as conservatively as possible and, toward the end of the term, if he has money he doesn’t need, return it to the government. For every $100 of his spring Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loan he returns within 120 days of its disbursement, Washington will immediately cancel all fees and interest applicable to that $100. The result is that for every $100 he returns, the total amount he’ll ultimately repay on this loan will be cut by up to $191!

There’s an old saying, “Never gamble unless you can afford to lose the money.” If your student needs loans and/or other financial aid to help pay for college, he certainly cannot afford to lose money on erratic investments such as cryptocurrencies!

College Affordability Solutions has 40 years of experience in counseling students and parents on ways to manage their dollars for college. Call (512) 366-5354 or email collegeafford@gmail.com for a no-cost consultation.

Maybe your high school senior is planning to be a teacher, or your college student’s already an education major. Her 2018-19 financial aid offer may include a Federal TEACH Grant. If so, she needs to be extremely careful about that grant!

If your student fails to timely document four years of required service within eight years of leaving the major for which she got a TEACH Grant, her grant will turn into a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Loan. Interest then gets charged going back to the dates her TEACH Grant was disbursed. For example, if a $4,000 TEACH Grant received eight years ago converted to an unsubsidized loan today, your student could end up repaying $9,360 in principal and interest.

So it’ll be quite costly if your student receives a TEACH Grant but then moves to another major (80% of all students change majors), doesn’t teach, or teaches in a school or subject that doesn’t fulfill TEACH Grant service requirements. Small wonder a recent U.S. Department of Education study shows that 63% of TEACH Grants have been converted to unsubsidized loans.

The situation’s so bad that at least one state’s Attorney General is trying to sue FedLoans for “callous disregard” of ex-students’ needs. But the current Secretary of Education is protecting FedLoans by asserting that it’s immune from state consumer protection lawsuits as a federal contractor. Ultimately, the courts will have to resolve this matter.

A Bad Deal!

If your student’s awarded a TEACH Grant, suggest she request other grants instead. If she must take the TEACH Grant, stress the importance of completing its service requirements and carefully documenting everything she does to provide FedLoans with proof that she fulfilled them. Even then, that TEACH Grant may still be a bad deal!

Need help deciphering financial aid offers? Contact College Affordability Solutions at (512) 366-5354 or collegeafford@gmail.com for a no-cost consultation!

The costs of attendance (“sticker prices”) colleges publish are not always what their students pay. In addition to federal and state awards, many schools offer their own gift aid (grants and scholarships) to discount tuition, fees, and even other expenses.

If an institution promises your prospective student a certain amount of institutional gift aid, analyze its offer carefully. It may be designed to “game” your student by discounting his initial sticker price, but then maximumize the tuition he pays in the future.

Here are some tactics to be on guard against:

Bait and Switch

Institutional aid offers may be part of sleazy bait and switch strategies that even some reputable colleges employ. The most obvious of these is loss leader awards — first-year gift aid without renewal commitments for subsequent years. But they can be part of more subtle and sophisticated schemes, too. For more about the latter, see “Before College: Beware of Bait and Switch.”

Wait and See

Be careful if an institutional representative suggests your student pay expensive and non-refundable enrollment deposits now, then hold on to find out if more grant or scholarship funding can be freed up for him later. Your student may or may not get additional gift aid — absent a written commitment, there’s no assurance of it — or the added aid may not match his needs or expectations.

Curbing Comparative Shopping

Thousands of postsecondary schools reportedly provide the Financial Aid Shopping Sheet with their financial aid offers. This document lays out sticker prices and financial aid awards in a common format, making it easy to do a side-by-side comparison of the net first-year prices your student will face at various colleges.

The Shopping Sheet also divulges the median amount borrowed by a college’s graduates, plus graduation and student loan default rates for its undergraduates — the last two being relative measures of institutional quality.

Unfortunately, the Shopping Sheet is voluntary. Some schools don’t provide it, making it difficult to measure them against their competitors. Before your student pays an expensive enrollment deposit to such a school, ask why it isn’t revealing it’s comparative data. In short — what is the school trying to hide?

Even colleges making honest and straightforward aid offers can be expensive. So help your student avoid falling prey to the games some schools play with aid offers so his higher education will be as affordable as possible.

College Affordability Solutions has 40 years experience with strategies that help make education beyond high school more affordable. For a no-charge consultation about such strategies, call (512) 366-5354 or email collegeafford@gmail.com.

On Monday the White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2019, which begins this coming October. The prospective budget is similar to HR 4508, the “Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform” (PROSPER) Act. This is a bill designed to revamp federal higher education programs. It will soon to be debated in the House.

If your student is now or likely will be a federal financial aid recipient, contact your U.S. Representatives and Senators to let them know your thoughts on the proposed budget and HB 4508. Why? If Congress passes either as written, several federal student aid programs would be reduced or eliminated.

Subsidized Federal Direct Loans: Currently, no interest is charged on these loans until six months after their undergraduate borrowers leave college. But they would end for those first borrowing on or after July 1, 2019. Even at current interest rates, which are expected to rise, this would increase the cost of borrowing the $27,000 maximum allowed over 4 academic years by at least $2,800.

Income-Driven Repayment: Four repayment options would be replaced by one repayment plan requiring ex-students to pay 12.5%, instead of the current 10%, of their discretionary income toward their federal college debts. The repayment period would last 15 years instead of 20 to 30 years for undergraduates, and 30 years for graduate students. Discretionary income is the amount a borrower’s income exceeds 150% of poverty-level.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF): Any student first borrowing a federal loan on/after July 1, 2019 would be ineligible for PSLF.

Federal College Work-Study (FCWS): The budget would reduce FCWS funding by 49.5%. FCWS currently helps over 630 thousand students earn more than $1 billion a year to pay college costs. Graduate students would become ineligible for FCWS.

Federal Pell Grants: College costs keep rising, but the budget proposes to limit Pell Grants to the same amount as in FY 2019 as this year.

Pell Grant eligibility would be extended to students in short-term programs providing certificates, licenses, or other credentials for “in-demand fields”. For-profit vocational schools usually offer such programs, but their certificate earners average 1.5% higher unemployment rates, 11% lower earnings, and $5,000 more in student debt than students earning similar certificates at community colleges.

Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants (FSEOGs): The FSEOG program, which provides extra grant dollars to approximately one million of the nation’s neediest Pell Grant recipients, would be eliminated.

Contact College Affordability Solutions at (512) 366-5354 or collegeafford@gmail.com for a no-cost consultation you have questions about how to pay for college.

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed its tax bill. This bill would repeal many of the higher education tax benefits on which millions of college students and parents rely. But it isn’t law yet.

The U.S. Senate will soon act on a similar bill. But as currently written, the Senate’s bill would keep the House-targeted college tax benefits in place and unchanged. These benefits include:

College Savings Bonds: The House would start taxing students on money they use from such bonds to pay college expenses.

Coverdell Education Saving Accounts: The House would prohibit new deposits into these accounts.

Death and Disability Debt Discharge: The House would tax student loan debts forgiven for borrowers who die or suffer total and permanent disabilities.

Employer-Provided Educational Assistance: The House would subject what your employer spends on your tuition, fees, books, and supplies to taxation The Senate would leave current law as is — so only employer spending above $5,250 would be taxed.

Graduate Tuition Reduction Exclusion: The House would make all tuition reductions awarded to graduate research and teaching assistants taxable income.

Interest Deduction on Student Loans: The House would end this $2,500 per year deduction.

Lifetime Learning and American Opportunity Tax Credits: The House would repeal the Lifetime Learning credit that applies to what you pay on a course helping you get a degree or a job skill. Instead, it would expand the American Opportunity credit from 4 to 5 years. But the American Opportunity credit applies only to degree-related courses. The Senate would leave both credits unchanged.

Tuition and Fee Deduction: The House would kill this $4,000 per year deduction for what you pay in tuition and fees for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents.

All these changes would take affect in 2018 unless the Senate causes them to be dropped.

The Senate will amend, debate, and vote on its bill soon after Thanksgiving, so there’s little time to contact your Senators (their contact information is here). Urge them to use the Senate bill to preserve the tax benefits described above.

The House and Senate must negotiate to finalize all differences in the bills they pass, and such negotiations often lead to one or the other bill’s differences being dropped. So the last, best hope for preserving these tax benefits is a Senate tax bill that opposes the House’s plan to kill them.

Contact College Affordability Solutions at (512) 366-5354 or collegeafford@gmail.com if you have questions.